For creators, community is the new follower count

I read this article today and found it interesting because we are all here exchanging ideas because @craigconstantine decided to set up a community.

I though this might stimulate some good conversation.

A few years ago, I talked a lot about a future in SaaS businesses with big companies and a lot of lower revenue companies specialized to solving specific problems. I’ve really see this same effect in the community space as people like us navigate to specific online platforms tailored around specific topics and interests to go deeper into topics and learning (why we are all here).

Places like Facebook can be extremely noisy and if you want to specifically learn and converse around specific topics, it can be difficult. I also see a huge advantage with influencers building equity value in their own personal platforms.

Social media is a good pathway to build your influence and a funnel. Specialized platforms are mechanisms to provide more value to develop your tailored community.

What does everyone think?

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This reminds me of an item in today’s PodNews issue

  • After the finalisation of the socialInteract tag last week in the new podcast namespace, John Spurlock is testing the idea of an automated activitypub service, called Threadland. Simple to support, as soon as it’s finished, Podnews will be an enthusiastic user.

(I’ve not dug into that at all.)

I often talk about how “asking” our listeners to [insert everything we ever ask them to do] doesn’t work well, because they have to change mental modes. They’re in whatever-it-is their headspace is in, when they listen to our show.

And I’ll toss in that this community came first, later I created the companion podcast. The podcast serves the people (the specific people, but also “the sort of people”) who are interested in this community.

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